She describes her most successful creation as Sex and the City with kebabs. Because unlike Carrie and co, the three thirty-something characters in Sharon Horgan's irreverent comedy series Pulling are more interested in a pint of lager than a pair of Louboutins. This is London, not Manhattan, where the layer of filth has a decidedly familiar ring to it, and where Karen, the character with the dirtiest mouth, makes Samantha Jones sound like Sister Wendy. Co-producer and writer Horgan, who also plays the slightly less outrageous Donna, and who won Best Actress at last December's British Comedy Awards, based much of the script on her own experiences during her 20s and early 30s. "Every female flatmate, and every relationship I had, is in that show," she has said. "Personally, my 20s were a complete waste of time. I think I spent a lot of that time depressed. I had relationships to distract myself from the fact that there wasn't really anything going on with my career, with my life. I think women... we've got a lot more going on, haven't we? More drama, more ups and downs."

Speaking on RTé after winning her award, Horgan put part of Pulling's appeal down to its not being all dewy-eyed about female friendship. The selfishness underlying friends' motives also makes for some of the funniest exchanges. Karen: "Donna, you only have a tenner left, so what's it to be? Food or electricity?" "Food?" "Wrong answer. Booze."

It's "cringe" comedy, as opposed to feelgood comedy, the sort of stuff that Steve Coogan and Julia Davis (two of Horgan's comic heroes) excel at, where you laugh before you realise you shouldn't. But if Sharon Horgan is such a channel of all that's hilarious in the search for fun and meaning in life, how come so many people, especially Irish people, are unaware of her? (The Observer dubbed her "the funniest comedian you've never heard of".) It's due in part to her behind-the-scenes role as a comic writer for sketch shows such as Monkey Dust and The Catherine Tate Show, although her material wasn't used in Tate's sketches in the end. "When it comes to writing, you can have a career and never get anything on the telly. So that's why I knew people knew about me in the industry, but not outside."

Pulling's appreciative, but limited, audience is down to the vagaries of multi-channel land. Aired in 2006, the two series were shown on BBC3, although the first series had a subsequent late-night run on BBC2. The offer of a third series from Horgan and co-writer Dennis Kelly was surprisingly declined by the BBC.

But the woman whose keen wit was a shield against playground bullies during her schooldays in Dublin, and who survived performing "Chekhov in community halls to audiences of five people – two of them drunk", now has a Hollywood agent. There's interest in a US version of Pulling, and just as much interest in its creator.

Born in London to Irish parents, Horgan's family moved to live in Dublin when she was seven. One of five, her brother Shane is the well-known rugby international who gives her a "great opportunity to shout at the telly". The family have always proved reliable sounding boards for her comedy: "I know what they like; we have similar tastes. When I brought over a tape of a mini pilot, they didn't go, at the end, 'Yeah, that was good.' They were too busy laughing."

In her convent schooldays, her skill at keeping the bullies laughing kept her on their right side too. "I had very powerful best friends. You know – nasty, evil girls, popular girls. But I didn't have a bullying nature myself – although I do now of course. Like with my husband."

Disappointed with art college in Dublin, she headed to London at 19, "for a year, but ended up staying, doing a series of small jobs and basically having a laugh". There was some fringe-theatre work too, and she became bitten by the acting bug. By the time she was 27, Horgan felt she needed "to make money and have a proper life" and enrolled at university to do a degree in English. The result of the creative-writing strand was her successful collaboration with Kelly, who she had met in her early days in London. They won the BBC's New Comedy Award in 2001, and from that eventually came their commission for two series of Pulling.

Horgan still lives in London, in increasingly fashionable Hackney, with husband Jeremy Rainbird, MD of a creative agency, and their two small daughters, Sadhbh and Eimear. Marriage and motherhood sound emotionally miles away from her insecure characters in Pulling, but she says she retains a very realistic outlook on relationships. "I met my husband when I was 34, and found myself pregnant after we'd been together only six months, and did this extreme life-change thing, thought, 'Shit, I'd better get all this sorted out.' But we've got that thing where we are the right people for each other and we found each other."

And even if her award-winning career takes a nosedive, there's always the commercial potential of one of her characters' greatest 'inventions' in Pulling to explore. For unlike the cocktail-swilling Sex and the City gang, who like to exchange exploits over a Cosmopolitan, man-stalking Louise's idea of refreshment is her 'cockloleeze' – a very, very rudely shaped ice-lolly...

Curriculum Vitae

Born: London, 1970, to Irish parents. Moved to Dublin aged seven

Education: Degree in English, Brunel University, west London

Career: Writing, acting and comic credits include: The Friday Night Project; Annually Retentive; Monkey Dust; Pulling (BBC3, 2006-2008); Angelo's (Channel Five, 2007); Free Agents (Channel 4, 2009)

Awards: BBC New Comedy Award (2001); Bafta nomination (2006); Best Actress British Comedy Awards (2008)

Personal life: Married to Jeremy Rainbird; two daughters Sadhbh (5) and Eimear (9 months); lives in Hackney, east London

In the news: Nominated this week for a Best Comedy Performance Bafta for Pulling